She says: “If the Sinhalese and Tamils can break bread and move peacefully onward, then I share the optimism that Sri Lanka will … prosper while delighting travelers fortunate enough to experience the ‘Pearl of South Asia’ and its generous, hospitable people.”

She is inspired by Sri Lanka’s Romesh Gunesekera, who wrote: “A very special island that travelers from Sinbad to Marco Polo dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry.”

And so to the capital Colombo, where the Shangri-La hotel in the northern Fort district “was pleasurable walking distance to the area’s main sites”.

She is particularly struck by the Old Dutch Hospital, with its restaurants and shops, the red-facade Cargill’s department, “once Colombo’s retail grand dame”, and the Grand Oriental Hotel, “where Anton Chekhov stayed among other notables”.